Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

Thursday, March 5, 2015

$1.1 Billion and Five Years Later, the 405 Congestion Relief Project Is a Fail

This past May the project known as the I-405 Sepulveda Pass Improvement
Project came to official completion, with resulting new on-ramps and
off-ramps, bridges and a northbound 405 carpool lane stretching 10 miles
between the 10 and 101 Freeways.

The four-turned–five-year, $1.1 billion project became a
long-running nightmare of sudden ramp closures, poorly advertised by
Metro and made all the worse by baffling detours that led drivers into
the unfamiliar Bel Air Hills and Sherman Oaks hills, dead ends and unlit
canyons.

As Metro's closures and delays reached their height in 2013, L.A. Weekly
encountered stranded motorists merely by following Metro's official
detours — which in many cases were roads to nowhere. And it isn't over
in the Valley or on the Westside. Sudden ramp and lane closures are
still hitting motorists at Getty Center, Valley Vista, Skirball Center
and elsewhere as work on the officially completed project grinds on.

There is one crystal-clear improvement: With barricades gone
and ramp closures less frequent, commuters are at least getting relief
from problems Metro itself created — particularly its widely mocked
detours, which proved indecipherable on its website and could not be
explained by road crews. Now, says Brian Taylor, director of UCLA's
Institute of Transportation Studies, commuters who had to leave home "at
5:15 a.m." during the five-year rebuilding are "leaving at 7."

But the $1.1 billion question hangs in the air: Is the 405
any more relieved of congestion than when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa,
Congressman Brad Sherman and County Supervisor Gloria Molina demanded in
2006 that L.A.'s "fair share" of state bond money be used to add
carpool lanes to the 405?

The answer is no.

A traffic study by Seattle-based traffic analytics firm Inrix
has shown that auto speeds during the afternoon crawl on the northbound
405 are now the same or slightly slower — the maddening 35-minute
tangle between the 10 and the 101 is actually a minute longer.

More worrisome is the morning southbound logjam. It's so bad,
post-improvements, that when Caltrans issues its "worst bottleneck"
rankings in August, unofficial data suggest that the 10-mile stretch of
the 405 between the Valley and the Westside could be the worst freeway
segment in California.

Urged in 2006 to act in the name of "congestion relief" by
Villaraigosa, Sherman, Molina and labor leaders, then–Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger signed SB 1026, placing the 405 carpool project at the
front of the line for Proposition 1B transportation bond money.

Villaraigosa was particularly ardent, repeatedly making
statements such as, "Make no mistake, this is going to be an important
contribution for reducing congestion on the 405.''

Those who endured five years of disruption were assumed to be
sacrificing in large part to give L.A.'s workforce a needed carpool
lane. Metro and Caltrans cut away a vast tonnage of rock in Sepulveda
Pass to make room for the storied carpoolers.

But longtime statistics had already shown that not many people would form carpools.

"Conceptually, there's little reason to think that just
adding another lane, even a carpool [lane], is going to noticeably
reduce traffic," says Michael Manville, assistant professor of city and
regional planning at Cornell University. "This is a project that has
very high and very certain costs. But the benefits are much less
certain."

On a purely personal level, losses to residents were high.
The Texas Transportation Institute says that every hour a person sits in
traffic tie-ups costs an average of $16.79 in extra fuel and lost time.
What unfolded during five years of 405 reconstruction "seems a
very large cost for not very much gain," says Bob Poole, director of
transportation policy at Reason Foundation.

A number of studies have shown that carpooling is declining
even as carpool lanes are added, often to the exclusion of other major
transportation projects.

Metro's board, made up of 14 politicians and their
appointees, represents all 88 cities in Los Angeles County but is
dominated by the city of Los Angeles and its mayor. Powerful L.A.
leaders wanted a 405 carpool lane — and they got one.

Their claims of "congestion relief" weren't based on
prevailing research, and the Metro board knew that. One of the most
detailed studies of work-bound carpoolers, by Nancy McGuckin and Nandu
Srinivasan, showed that in 2001, 83 percent of such carpools consisted
of members of the same family, and 74 percent of "work tour" carpoolers —
a broader definition that includes commuters who stop for errands or
drop people off on the way to work — consisted of people from the same
household.

Carpooling has been dying off in Los Angeles since 1990, even
as local and regional leaders continue to spend enormous sums creating a
vast carpool system.

A longtime critic of carpool lanes, Poole suggests that the
only path to congestion reduction is to convert some 405 lanes to
pay-per-ride FasTrak lanes, such as those on the 10 and 110. He says
Metro also would "actually generate some revenue to offset the huge
cost. In Miami it's been a huge success."

According to Cornell's Manville, a FasTrak is not likely to
happen. "Most of the time, when you meet the enemy, it is us," Manville
says. "The powers that be deal with political constraints and they're
not going to get permission to put tolls on the 405."
Another reason the 405 seems as bad as ever has little to do
with carpooling and is related to how motorists behave when a roadway
opens up a bit thanks to improvements.

Faced with a badly congested freeway, commuters will start to
seek alternatives on different roadways, by choosing earlier or later
travel times or a change in mode of transportation. Eventually, the
area's transport grid reaches an equilibrium.

But after a project improves the roadway, drivers come back
from the side streets. Off-peak commuters return to peak times. Public
transportation riders switch back to driving. The transportation term is
"triple convergence," and it helps explain how beneficial effects from
the 405 project are likely invisible to the casual observer.

Whatever else is true, despite its billing the 405
reconstruction did not take on the fundamental problems in the Sepulveda
Pass Corridor, which according to Metro historically has been the most
congested highway segment in the United States.

Daily, tens of thousands of motorists pour out of the San
Fernando Valley and down through the pass, bound for jobs to the south.
Drivers have very few routes by which to cross the Santa Monica
Mountains. On the city side, the 405 is affected not only by people
squeezing north through Sepulveda Pass to return home but also by a
tremendous afternoon flow of eastbound cars leaving coastal L.A.

The interrelated backups have complex causes, among them the
key job centers in Santa Monica, Playa Vista, El Segundo and environs;
the inability of the eastbound 10 to handle the home-bound surge inland;
and the limited capacity of the Westside's east-west surface roads,
with Santa Monica Airport acting as a permanent obstacle. And, of
course, the few routes to the Valley over the mountains.

UCLA's Taylor says that beyond its widening to allow carpool
lanes, the 405 project had other important justifications, including the
rebuilding and seismic strengthening of decaying old freeway surfaces,
bridges and underground utilities.

"If the standard of this reconstruction is clear streets
during rush hour, that was not going to happen," says Taylor, who adds,
"There's a concept called 'latent demand' by which you have a congested
roadway, you add some lanes, it opens up running more smoothly, and then
it gets back to where it was before."

Today, Metro points out that it has at least increased the
405's exiting flow with its soaring freeway ramps at Wilshire and Sunset
boulevards and much-improved new bridges at Sunset, Skirball Center and
Mulholland Drive.

Metro gets some support in this view from Rod Liber, of the
Brentwood Homeowners Association, who says, "Exiting the 405 on Wilshire
is more civil now. The overpasses eliminate the mixing of on-traffic
with off-traffic. However, with Sunset there's no way to synchronize the
lights to keep the traffic moving."

But Sunset Boulevard has seen "mild, not substantial,
improvement," says Liber, its prodigious backup still snaking west as
far as the Brentwood business district and east past UCLA as cars try to
access the still-stoppered 405.

A Metro spokesman suggests that the 405 widening project's
failure to cut congestion is partially or even largely about the
economy.

Metro spokesman Dave Sotero says there was simply less
traffic "in the pit of the Great Recession," and the project can't
expect to offset the increased traffic that has materialized thanks to
L.A.'s employment rebound and lower gas prices.

Will the next economic downturn or the current spike in gas
prices provide any of the congestion relief Los Angeles leaders
promised?

Sotero predicts at least some congestion relief from the new
northbound 405 carpool lane, which he says will boost carpooling, van
pooling and bus riding. He points to the Valley-Westside Express, a new
nonstop bus using the carpool lane between Westwood and the Valley's
popular Orange Line, a dedicated busway.

Jay Beeber, a film producer who ran this month for L.A. City
Council District 4, which sprawls from Sherman Oaks over the Hollywood
Hills to Miracle Mile, asks, "If they're doing all this work, why didn't
they put in a dedicated transit line, like the Orange Line? ... With
two additional paved lanes, we could have solved a lot of our traffic
problems commuting in the morning."

Austin Beutner, now CEO of the Los Angeles Times but
previously a Los Angeles deputy mayor, has said that Metro didn't
proceed intelligently, spending the state 1B bond money and federal
funds on inefficient carpool lanes instead of using the widening of the
405 to place a commuter train down its middle.

Beeber suggests the 405 widening failure shows that L.A.'s political class can't think outside the box.
"They say that a train running through the Sepulveda Pass,
for instance, [will not happen for] 20 or 30 years. I don't know why it
takes so long, and yet we all kind of accept that it does." He cites
another idea long used in cities such as Seattle, but still not a
serious plan in L.A.: reversible lanes on Sepulveda Boulevard, the
snarled 405 frontage road whose backup switches direction from morning
to evening.

With traffic jams as bad as ever, Metro may have a hard time
selling other projects to residents expected to sacrifice for the
greater good. Many still dish on Metro's bizarre detours and
incomprehensible closure notices.

One unusual car "trap" that gained a certain infamy was at
the Santa Monica Boulevard northbound entrance to the 405. There, Metro
encouraged motorists to enter what appeared to be the under-construction
northbound freeway ramp. In fact, it was really a cordoned-off,
55-minute waiting line into which unsuspecting drivers were herded.

People who had a family emergency or needed to use the bathroom were simply out of luck.

Marc Danziger, a technology strategist from Torrance, who got
caught in the trap one Friday night, explained at the time, "They had
created a little channel with concrete barriers and have us locked in
this one lane along the road's shoulder. ... All that traffic going
north from Santa Monica Boulevard, both directions from Wilshire, and
more, are channeled into this one-lane 'canal' they've built."

It took him 55 minutes to creep one mile in the trap, after
which he was finally allowed to merge onto the 405 near Montana Avenue.
Just close the on ramp, Danziger said. Don't trick people into a
one-hour delay.

At the time, Sotero explained of Metro's controversial
planning that the city of Los Angeles also reviewed its detours. But
what was considered "logical for a motorist, we wouldn't necessarily
recommend, because we don't want to send masses of humanity down local
streets. ... There are rules about that stuff — which you can ask
Caltrans about."

The lack of discernible congestion relief on the 405, after
so many prominent and public promises were made, cannot be seen as good
advertising for Metro as it prepares to ask Los Angeles County residents
for yet another tax hike to pay for transportation and transit
projects.

Known as Measure R2, the proposed sales-tax hike aiming for
the 2016 ballot is currently conceived as lasting 45 years. The players
gathering support for it also pushed the 30-year Measure R sales tax
hike, approved by voters for transit projects in 2008, as well as the
Measure J sales tax hike for transit projects, which voters defeated in
2010 —and the $1.1 billion Sepulveda widening project.

Beeber, best known as the activist who ended L.A.'s hated red-light
camera program, argues, "The failure of Measure J highlights the deep
skepticism the public has with regards to how efficiently their tax
dollars will be used. We just spent five years and over $1 billion
reconstructing the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass and all we have to
show for it is an additional carpool lane and some improved exit ramps.
That's not nothing, but most drivers don't perceive any major difference
in their motoring experience."

A major goal of Measure R2, though still under discussion,
could be construction of a huge tunnel through Sepulveda Pass running
roughly parallel to the 405 and containing a "multideck" highway. One
government consultant has suggested this could cost $6 billion to $20
billion and take decades to build.